Bøker av Mark Cox

Mark Cox pulls no punches in these candid poems about family, relationships, loss, regret, growing older and our human condition, generally. "Looking back for a low point marking the worst of my insobriety, it might be that signal moment I put out my cigarette in the holy water font of St. Paul's Catholic church, right in front of the priest, I might add. . . " Sometimes wry, sometimes tender, always honest and thought provoking, this is the seventh volume of poetry from a lauded veteran poet who has been publishing prominently for almost forty years.

Behind surfaces that can sometimes be wryly comic, Mark Cox is unafraid to risk adult tenderness ("brutal tenderness" he says in one poem) and great empathy for this world's sufferers. Which is to say that beneath a rich variety of occasions (from an ancient Egyptian mummifier doing up a fifteen-foot crocodile, to a current-day housewife doing up an angel food cake), Cox's bedrock concern is that impossible thing of endless grief and joy that we call the human condition. These poetic meditations and monologues are some of the least prosaic prose you'll ever read. -Albert Goldbarth

In Natural Causes, a collection haunted by death, compassion, and love, the penchants for metaphor and resonant turn of phrase that informed Cox's earlier work remain as vibrant as ever.